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Welcome to the suck: roundup of Doritos XBLA finalists

The finalists for the Doritos-sponsored "design an Xbox Live Arcade game" …

Back in June, Doritos called for game designers to bring forth ideas for a corporate-sponsored Xbox Live Arcade game. Unlike previous contests, entrants would play the role of designer rather than developer; coding would be handled by a "professional XBLA development team." The finalists of the contest have now been announced, and they are as hilarious as we'd hoped. We've played through them all and offer our vote for the winner:

Monkeys from Mt. Doritos - A Pacman-esque game where you guide a monkey around a maze gathering Doritos like the Tri-force while avoiding evil crabs. The game has a great art style, but the play moves at a snail's pace. Boring. This sucks.

Ultimate Dodgeball Champions - Compete for glory as one of two teams in the true test of a man's worth: dodgeball. UDC has the potential to be a fun throw-away game on Xbox Live, though the dodging mechanic is a bit broken. This sucks slightly less.

Doritos Dash of Destruction - An overhead, GTA1 style game where you either chase or get chased through a bustling metropolis. You get to do the dash as your choice of either a truck or a T-Rex. Dash of Destruction isn't a completely detestable idea, but the T-Rex controls like a tank and the truck controls like a T-Rex. Since dinosaurs don't suck, we may be on to something.

Rythum Racing - A homage to Mak and Mizuguchi, Rythum Racing is a spaceship racing game where the wormhole track changes based on the music in the background. It has some great potential on paper, but
unfortunately the execution (at least in the pilot Flash version)
leaves a lot to be desired. Takes good source material and makes it suck.

PB's Quest for Flavor – A 3D platformer-adventure game set in a world where nothing is as it seems, and different chips give the player-controlled pill bug, PB, special powers. Don't even get me started. You know how when you eat a lot of Cool Ranch Doritos and use the restroom the next day? Imagine that in game form. In other words: man, does it suck.

I wasn't expecting much, honestly but, if you thought the Yaris game was bad, brace yourself. Ultimate Dodgeball Champions would get my vote, and thus we've decided to award it with the Ars Technica seal of Least Suck. The multiplayer portion may actually be a decent little time-waster when you and a friend are bored—but only if the title is available for free like in previous promotions. If it isn't, god help the souls at Doritos Corp. who think these are going to sell.

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